“Son of a bitch.”
He pounded on Am’s door, frantic, not caring a whit about her neighbors or the lateness of the hour. In his defense, he’d tried calling first, but she hadn’t picked up. Am could be such a bitch sometimes. He kept the pounding up. “Am. Am!”
A door across the hall swung open, a man with bedhead and sleepy eyes poking his head out. “What the hell? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Bodie reeled, their eyes meeting. Bodie’s transmitted something that forced the man back a step and drove him to narrow the crack in his door. “Shut your door,” he ordered, “and mind your business.” He watched as the man shrank back and quietly eased the door closed. Bodie waited for the lock to click before he turned back to Am’s door. He was about to pound again when the door opened. Am stood there in a short robe, her hair mussed.
“What the hell?” she whispered. “Do you know what time it is?”
Bodie pushed past her, the box with the train in his hands. He shoved the box at her. “Look.”
She looked down at the box but didn’t take it. “Bod, it’s two in the morning and . . . what’s this?”
He pressed the box into her hands. “Look!”
A half-naked, half-drunk man shuffled out of the bedroom, struggling into a shirt as he came. He was leaving on tiptoe, like he was embarrassed, like Bodie cared what Am did in her bed. “Later,” the creeper said to Am, giving her an unenthusiastic thumbs-up she didn’t bother to acknowledge or return. Bodie waited impatiently for the idiot to get out and close the door behind him.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Am said, but he could tell she didn’t mean it. The man, like R., was a port in a storm. Temporary. Not meant to be anything.
“Am,” he barked.
“All right. All right.” She took the box and then shuffled into the kitchen and dropped it on the table. Bodie expected a shocked expression, a gasp, something, when she opened it, but he didn’t get any of that. Am stared at the train, then at him. “It’s a train. I don’t remember asking for one. It’s not our birthday.”
“Not funny. You know what you’re looking at. He made it. He’s not dead or somewhere else. He’s here, and he knows where I live. And if he knows where I live, he knows where you live too.”
Am pushed the box away. “Calm down.”
She didn’t look surprised. There was no fear.
This wasn’t a revelation.
“You know, don’t you?” he said, seething. “I can see it in your eyes. You know he’s alive. You know he’s here.”
She closed the box carefully. “Look, Bod—”
“How long?”
She opened the fridge and took out a bottled water and twisted off the cap. “I don’t think this—”
He wasn’t about to let her turn this around. “How. Long.”
Amelia took a sip of water first. “Remember the letters he wrote us? There was something extra in mine. A number where we could reach him . . . if we needed to. So it wasn’t a complete abandonment, more of a stepping back.”
“For you. There was nothing in my letter, and there’s been nothing since. You’ve seen him? Talked to him?”
“I dialed the number a few times over the years. Sometimes I just needed to hear his voice, to know we still had family.” She put the bottle down and crossed her arms against her chest, staring at the kitchen linoleum. “Family’s important.” Amelia looked up into his eyes. “I haven’t seen him. I don’t know where he is.”
He searched her face. “You’re lying.”
She shook her head. “Both things are true.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
Her eyes swept over him. “Why would I? Look at you. You’re all over the place over a dumb train. It was enough that I knew where to go if we needed anything.”
He bristled. “You mean if you did.”
“I said ‘we.’”
“Did you call him when I was arrested? Or when I was in Westhaven?”
“He couldn’t have helped with that,” she said.
“So you didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Bodie watched her, not believing what he was hearing.
“He’s killing,” he said. “You know he is, and all the time you knew it. And you know the police are looking at me.”
“It’s not him,” she said.
“It is.” Bodie felt himself go. Anger, fear, frustration, all of it taking hold, turning him around and over. He grabbed the box off the table and threw it to the floor. Am didn’t flinch. She never did. He was the one who jumped at shadows and led a wrecked life. “It’s him, and I don’t want any part of it. Hasn’t he done enough?”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, bending down to pick up the box. She lifted the lid to find the train with most of its wheels broken off. “You ruined it.” She fiddled with the wheels, trying to reattach them, but it was no use. “You can’t choose your family, Bod. He loves us.”
“Stop.” He took the box from her, helping her up. “Just stop. He doesn’t know what love is. He’s sick, evil. And he’s here to do it all again. He’s why Silva’s gotten it into her head—”
“I told you she’s nothing to worry about.”
“Easy for you to say. Easier for him.”
“Trust me,” Amelia said. “All of this will work out.”
He glared at her. “Trust you.” He glanced down at the box, the sight of it repugnant to him. “I’m not some scared little kid this time, Am. I’ll turn him in like it’s nothing if it means I’d be rid of him for good. And I won’t forget you lied to me.”
He walked out, leaving her at the door. Maybe this was the break; maybe it would be clean, like this, him simply walking away, but even as he left, he doubted it. The hooks were in and buried deep, the tether to Am too tight to easily sever.
As the sun prepared to rise a while later, he stepped out onto the rooftop of his building as he’d done countless times before. He walked over to the edge and stood there, his heels firmly planted, his toes cupping the rim. He tilted his head up to smell the impending dawn—clean, fresh, new. It promised to be a beautiful day.
The last time he’d stood here, the police had grabbed him away, branding him some suicidal freak. He hadn’t been. He wasn’t now. But this was a good place to think and choose. One decision, one spark of a notion, made the difference between being here and not being anywhere anyone could reach. He liked having the choice and actively affirming the former by simply stepping back. It was a test he always passed. He was stronger than Am or their father gave him credit for, smarter than they knew.
This rooftop was far above the filth and screech of the street. He could pass the test here. The demon that had raised them was alive. He was killing. Bodie now had to wrestle with the mother of all moral dilemmas. It was fortuitous that his aerie perch gave him a clear view of the building across the street. Third floor. Corner window. Where the redheaded girl lived.